1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer processing and, more particularly, to the performance of email server backup operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computer processing speeds, memory storage, and data bandwidth increase, so does the amount and complexity of data that business and industry manage on a daily basis. For example, modern email messages may be large markup language files which contain image files, audio or video clips, spreadsheets or other large data files as attachments. In addition, the number of users receiving email and the number of messages received daily by each user has skyrocketed.
Email messages may be managed for an office or business by a dedicated server which manages and stores both intra-office and external email. The mail server may provide each user of the email system with one or more folders for storing email messages. As described above, each email message may contain one or more attached files, which may also be stored within the mail folder. Furthermore, because email messages may be sent, or copied, to multiple users at once, a mail server may contain multiple duplicate messages and associated duplicate attachments scattered across multiple folders.
Because email messages may frequently contain information crucial to a business or industry, the contents of mail servers may frequently be copied, or backed up, to a backup storage to prevent loss or corruption of data. However, the large amount of data on many email servers may make this task difficult, since backup operations may be constrained by time and bandwidth limitations. For example, a backup operation may be expected to complete within two hours each night. However, due to the large amount of data to be transferred and the speed at which the data can be transferred, it is possible that not all of the data within the document database can be backed up during the allotted time.
Furthermore, the internal organization of the email server and the interface between the email server and the data backup system may also constrain the backup operation. For example, an email server typically groups messages together by folder or owner. Many data backup systems are configured such that the contents of the entire email server are backed up during each backup session.